Washington high court: Westlake Center escalators not a public forum
Friday, April 27, 2007 6:31 AM PDT
By Associated Press
Printable version
E-mail this articleSEATTLE (AP) -- The escalators, hallways and monorail boarding platform at Westlake Center shopping mall are not a public forum for free speech purposes, the state Supreme Court said Thursday in a case brought by Iraq war protesters who objected to being told to keep their signs down.
Protesters Beth Sanders and William and Patricia Daugaard sued the city and the mall's owner after they were told by security guards not to hold their signs up while they were in Westlake, on the monorail platform or on the monorail itself, on their way to a Seattle Center protest Feb. 15, 2003.
The monorail is owned by the city, which also holds a public easement for the escalators and the platform. But in a 7-2 decision, the court found that public safety concerns about the picket-style signs justified the speech restrictions, and that the areas in question do not constitute a public forum. The decision upheld the 2004 finding of a King County Superior Court judge.
"The oral policy requiring persons using the interior easement to hold stick-mounted signs down was not a ban on speech, but instead imposed valid time, place and manner restrictions," Justice Barbara Madsen wrote in the lead opinion.
"Requiring Beth Sanders and William and Patricia Daugaard to briefly lower their signs as they passed through an area where large numbers of people congregate in order to board onto or disembark from the Seattle Center Monorail is entirely reasonable and a minor limitation on their ability to communicate the message on their signs," Chief Justice Gerry Alexander wrote in a concurrence.
In separate dissents, Justices Tom Chambers and Richard Sanders harshly criticized the ruling.
"The Westlake Center walkway is like any other train, bus, or subway station around the world. It is exactly because people crowd into railway and subway stations that shops and businesses abound and people go there to express their ideas," Chambers wrote.
"I agree with the majority that public safety is a legitimate concern," he said. "The candle may light a fire, the stick may poke, and leaflets may clutter, but they are all risks we assume in a free society. The real risk is not the clutter, or the poke, or even the fire; it is the slow, gradual erosion of freedom, one governmental decision at a time."
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